I went to Athens once, just for the day. I visited the Parthenon, which features in Assassin's Creed Odyssey in its brand-new - and seemingly historically accurate - form.

A few things stood out to me.

Firstly, given that it's probably Greece's number one landmark, I was taken aback by just how utterly ramshackle the organisation was. Frankly, you'd have thought that this was the first day it had been open to the public, given the way crowds sort of all tried to push their way in, while panicked employees shouted at them to stop. Also; if you were in a wheelchair, or - like me - are profoundly resistant to physical exertion, best of luck climbing the health-and-safety guideline-challenging steps.

And secondly, I was alarmed by how many stray dogs were openly wandering around the site. I mean, what's that about? Why are there so many stray dogs in Athens, and why are there loads of them lounging around the Parthenon? You don't get stray dogs inside the Tower of London. I mean, I know Greece has had a rough few years, but some fences wouldn't be that expensive.

Or just hire somebody who enjoys kicking dogs off mountains or something. With a youth unemployment rate of almost 40%, Greek teenagers would jump at the opportunity.

Then again, most continental tourists attractions are, in my experience, similarly shambolic. See also Italy's Mount Vesuvius.

On the day we went up that, a couple of gentlemen were stood handing out wooden walking sticks for climbers. On the way back down we learned that these gentlemen had expected renumeration for their gesture - and were furiously snatching the sticks off of people demanding, in broken English, "Tip for stake!" (actually, they were bellowing "Tip for sake!", which you only would've read either as a typo, or as a contraction of "Tip for fuck's sake!" - which, with hindsight, they might've actually been saying).

At least the Parthenon dogs just lay there in their own filth, or wandered around being disgusting and malnourished, and didn't solicit payment.

Brexit can't come soon enough. 

If I wasn't writing about old video games and that on here, I'd probably be writing about theme parks. Whatever it is that appeals to me about games, theme parks stimulate the exact same gland.

It's a fatuously expensive interest to have, given that most of the really good theme parks are overseas, but I got hooked on Orlando back in the mid-00s, and like all passionate love affairs... logic and common sense are flung out the window. To be candid, rarely a day goes by when I don't watch a YouTube video about theme parks, and my Kindle is straining at the hems with books about the history of Disney and Universal Studios.

For me, the appeal is a heady brew of history, unparalleled accomplishment in art, design and customer services, the immersive nature of the theming, and sheer human achievement. And the fact that, for the most part, the best theme parks are just, y'know, really nice places to spend time. For me they're a celebration of human potential, somewhere to forget that the world can be a pretty grim place.

Until recently, my passion for theme parks had failed to intersect with my love of video games. That all changed back in 2015, when Universal Studios and Nintendo announced a joint venture to smash theme parks and video games into one another's face.

Wait. What? What mean dis?!

Created by MCA and Philips, Laserdisc was intended as a new home video format. Though higher quality than VHS or Betamax, it wasn't possible to record on Laserdisc, and its relatively low storage meant that movies often had to be split over two discs.

It's fair to suggest that Laserdisc is now best remembered for its contribution to gaming, a number of well-received arcade games leading to the Full Motion Video interactive movie fad of the early-90s. And  that, boys and girls, is what we shall be discussing today.

Here are the most significant Laserdisc games of all time. So, that's good. 

Look: Nintendo's latest patent appears to show some sort of housing for transforming a smartphone into a classic Game Boy. It's entirely possible that this is how Nintendo intends to exploit its handheld back catalogue, rather than release an entirely standalone Game Boy mini thing.

Or maybe it'll never come out.

You see, Nintendo has a long history of filing patents which never see the light of day. Some of the patents are more peculiar than others. Break out the "razzers", kids: this is a celebration of the latter!

Look at you; sat there in the nude with your legs splayed, and that self-satisfied smirk dancing across your soup-stained lips.

You think you know everything don't you? Well get this: you don't. Prepare to have the soup wiped from your jowls, because it is time to tell you about Entex Industries - the greatest games company you've never heard of, one of the most tragic victims of the 1983 games industry rupture.

What's that you say? You do know about Entex, and I'm an idiot because I've only just heard of them? At least I'm not the one in the nude, all covered in soup.

​PSYCHE!!

Nintendo, eh. They're the Disney of video games, yeah? All family-friendly, and jolly, and nice and stuff. I mean, take Mario; he's so approachable. Dontcha just wanna rub his bare belly, while making this noise: "thp-thppp-thpp-thhhppp"?

But look closer into Mario's eyes. There's something else there... something cold, ruthless, uncompromising. Those are the eyes that represent a corporate ethos which maximises profits, while attempting to crush its competition by any means. 

I've been as guilty as anyone of giving Nintendo a smooth ride, but no more... it's time to lay out the evidence, and ask the question: Is Nintendo a dick?

As a tweenager growing up in the early ‘90s, I managed to pester convince my parents into getting Sky TV. 

​It’s hard to encapsulate the feeling in today’s Netflix-laden, on-demand world, but the euphoria of being able to watch more than four channels was truly liberating at the time. While I only really begged my parents to get it so I could see The Simpsons and WWF, having a love for video games also allowed me to discover a host of related shows to cater my fixation. 

One of which was The Children’s Channel’s “The Super Mario Challenge”.

Officially produced in association with Nintendo, Super Mario Challenge was essentially a TV version of cult Nintendo 90 minute advert movie: The Wizard, only less of a kiddies knock-off of Rain Man and with 100% less Fred Savage.

Something Sega got right fairly early on in the Mega Drive's life was its marketing. Its famous "cybo-razor cut" TV ads succeeded in making the new system appear cool, without trying too hard. Unfortunately, not everything the company attempted was so successful. 

To wit: the series of ads that it ran in the legendary Viz Comic.

They were designed to fit in with the publication's style - crudely hand-drawn, and featuring even cruder humour. Alas, they misunderstood, on a fundamentally spectacular level, what made Viz popular. Indeed, Sega's ads would've fitted in perfectly with many of the similarly-not-getting-it Viz imitators which sprung up in the late-80s and early-90s; Zit, Smut, Poot, Spit et al. 

​Here, then, are ten of these woeful communiques. 

I bought my Mega Drive through the legendary Special Reserve catalogue, at a time when I was meant to be saving money due to imminent teenage fatherhood. I kept it quiet from my parents - with whom I was living at the time - knowing they'd have just seen it as further evidence of my irresponsibility. I figured I'd deal with the fallout once the thing arrived.

Unfortunately, my first impressions of the Mega Drive - and yes; its delivery was indeed met with the predicted barrage of condemnation - were not great. It came with the pack-in Altered Beast, and Super Thunder Blade, a game which set out to answer the question "What if Thunder Blade was actually really bad?".

Disappointed, I spent even more money to get Golden Axe, which - at least for a while - made the purchase somewhat worthwhile. 

Fact is, there just weren't many great games early in the Mega Drive's life. I bought Budokan and Sword of Sodan - both objectively appalling - but it wasn't until I picked up Revenge of Shinobi that it was worth suffering through the ongoing parental disapproval.

Heck, the first review I ever had on Digitiser was for a Mega Drive game - Green Dog The Beached Surfer Dude (nice graphics, shame about the insufferably sluggish controls). Fortunately, Sega gradually got its act together, and while I maintained a somewhat playfully antagonistic relationship towards the company once I became a games journo, I retain a real affection for the system.

Heck, by the time the Mega Drive was in its twilight, it was performing at a level which made it feel like an entirely different generation of hardware to the console responsible for something like, I dunno, the risible Last Battle.

Suffice to say, it has been a while since I last reviewed a brand new Mega Drive game. And Tanglewood is indeed a brand new Mega Drive game - developed on, and for, the original Sega hardware, and released on cartridge (though most of us will be playing this via Steam). Is this something we need in 2018? Can it go beyond giving us anything more than a brief drag on the nostalgia pipe?

 Will there ever be another Duke Nukem game? Following the 15 year development - and ultimate flopsy - of Duke Nukem Forever it seems unlikely. There were rumours of a prequel game from Gearbox - Duke Begins - but it seems that the project has since been cancelled.

Regardless, Duke Nukem 3D continues to cast a long shadow. As one of the biggest games of the 90s - Duke himself became a bona-fide gaming icon - he still has fans who yearn for a modern game worthy of that classic. Understandably so, given we don't have any game characters like Duke anymore. Let's face it, all game characters look the same these days. Duke was different and unique. 

But how - how - to update a character rooted in dated gameplay and attitudes? This is how.

How!

Right. I've written about Tomb Raider quite a bit over the past week, and not all of it has been pretty. Thing is... I care. That's the reason why I've written so much on the topic. I genuinely care about the franchise, I care about the character of Lara Croft, and I feel she's been badly served by the reboot.

We've had our three games in the new origin trilogy. It's done. It's over. Time to move on. It isn't too late to fix Lara Croft, and return the character to where she belongs; as the foremost icon of the modern games industry.

Because, you see, Lara is important. Not only is the character a British creation, but she's female, and there aren't enough female games protagonists with the sort of profile Lara once had. 

It's time to put my money where my mouth is. This is how I would fix Tomb Raider.